This invention relates to panel type optical devices suitable for information processing such as pattern recognition, image display and information storage, and more particularly to panel type optical devices in which light is emitted from or received by its panel surface and electro-optical conversion or photo-electric conversion is carried out at the end surface thereof.
Image detectors or photoelectric converters are known in the art, in which a number of photo-transistors or photosensitive elements are arranged in the form of a matrix or a line in a plane. In addition, image detectors or electricity-to-light converters (hereinafter referred to as electro-optical converters when applicable) in which luminescent elements such as electroluminescent diodes are arranged in the form of a matrix or a line in a plane are also known in the art. Furthermore, a method of optically connecting optical guide means such as mirrors and optical fibers to the photosensitive elements or luminescent elements is known.
However, these conventional photoelectric converters or electro-optical converter are disadvantageous in the following respects. A large number of photosensitive elements or luminescent elements are necessary for improving the resolution of these conventional converters, as a result of which the converter is intricate in construction, high in manufacturing cost and low in reliability.
Furthermore, in the conventional devices, an electrical peripheral device for addressing a number of photoelectric elements or electro-optical elements arranged on the beam receiving surface or the beam emitting surface thereof becomes intricate with the increase in number of them. Accordingly, electro-optical devices such as image detecting devices, image reading devices and image displaying devices which employ the conventional photoelectric or electro-optical converters are not always satisfactory in resolution, reliability, stability and cost. In other words, it counteracts against the constructional simplification, low cost, high stability and high reliability of the electro-optical device to increase the number of the conversion elements for improving the function thereof such as the resolution and making the display surface larger, that is, there is a limit in the improvement of the conventional electro-optical devices.
The improvement which has been done in this art, as is found in the conventional electro-optical devices having the integrated circuits of electroluminescent diodes or photo-transistors, is directed to the reduction of the number of purely optical parts therein and to the rationalization of electrical peripheral circuits for processing various information. As a result, in the electro-optical device employing the conventional photoelectric converters or the conventional electro-optical converters for the purpose of information processing, practically the improvement of resolution, the increase of an image size, the increase of information quantity to be processed and the like reach the limit.